Security banquet: queries over Trump protection

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1:37The Economist.

1:43Rosie Blau:Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm Rosie Bloor. And I'm Jason Palmer.

1:52Rosie Blau:Today on the show, we speak to Germany's top general and responses to our weekend intelligence episode on the Passport Bros.

2:08But first...

2:17Rosie Blau:At the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner on Saturday, Donald Trump, along with hundreds of reporters, had been served his first-course burrata salad. Then, at 8.32pm, a gunman ran past security, shooting a secret service agent and attempting to burst into the crowded ballroom.

2:42Rosie Blau:Trump and his vice president J.D. Vance were rushed away. The shooter was detained, later identified as 31-year-old Cole Thomas Allen from Torrance, California. Trump, still wearing his tuxedo, gave a press conference. Nobody told me this was such a dangerous profession. If Marco would have told me, maybe I wouldn't have run. And maybe I would have said, I'll take a pass. No, it's a dangerous profession. Havoc at the Hilton and the third assassination attempt on Donald Trump revives questions about the competence of the Secret Service. The White House Correspondents Dinner is a really odd institution.

3:25Lots of serious political journalists skip it, but it's a bit like a sort of nerd Oscars, where a group of journalists who normally have a fairly oppositional relationship with the president, all get together in black tie and congratulate themselves on being important and close to power.

3:44Rosie Blau:John Priddo is host of Checks and Balance, our weekly podcast on American politics, and our US editor. President Trump has skipped it in the past, and this time he went, but then of course it was thrown off course by gunfire. so just tell me what happened well a gunman tried to get to the president and apparently shoot him and perhaps other senior officials police tackled the gunman as he ran past a security checkpoint and before he could get to the ballroom where the president and the journalists were but there were shots fired everybody dived under the tables and i think what made things even scarier for people who were there is because the event was held in the basement of the Hilton in the ballroom.

4:30People didn't have phone reception, so they didn't know what was going on. The president noted at a press conference afterwards that the Secret Service acted speedily. He was fast. It was like a blur on tape. He was moving. It was very impressive the way they got him. They didn't let him get through. They drew those guns so fast. There's a nasty historical echo here, which is the Hilton Hotel, where this assassination attempt happened, was the site of an assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

5:01Rosie Blau:So Trump said the security services acted speedily, but this sounds like a massive security failure. It was, and it's hard to argue with that. There'll be lots of questions now and have been lots of questions already about the Secret Service and whether protocols were followed. The gunman himself posted a kind of manifesto in which he sort of boasted about how lax security was at the Hilton. In order to get into the lobby, all anyone had to do was to flash a ticket. But I would say after every event like this, people bash the Secret Service. They have an incredibly tough job. America is a very large country, 350 million people with the usual quotient of crazy people.

5:41But one big difference, of course, which is there are approximately half a billion guns held by civilians. And it's extremely hard to protect even a president from that. And also it's important to remember that an officer was injured in the line of duty here. So yes, there were problems with security, but I think people are perhaps expecting an impossible standard here. The president, who has a genius for turning every adversity to his advantage, said that the attempt was yet another reason why his great big new ballroom needed to be built at the White House. I didn't want to say this, but this is why we have to have all of the attributes of what we're planning at the White House.

6:23It's actually a larger room and it's much more secure. It's got drone proof. It's bulletproof glass. We need the ballroom. That's why Secret Service. That's why the military are demanding it. I think it's important to underline that the president yet again displayed some real courage here.

6:40Rosie Blau:John, you and I have spoken on previous Mondays after assassination attempts. This is the third probable attempt on Trump's life. Is political violence in America becoming more commonplace? Well, as you say, Rosie, three attempts on Donald Trump's life, various other plots that have been foiled. Over the past year, we've had the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Melissa Hortman, a Democratic state lawmaker in Minnesota. It does feel like we talk about this a lot. And if you look at the polling, 85 % of Americans think that political violence is increasing in America. I don't know whether that's actually right.

7:20It's an incredibly hard thing to measure. In the aftermath of this, of course, it feels true. But if you take a bit of historical perspective, I think it's unarguable there's less political violence now than there was in the 1960s or the 1970s, where there were assassinations and even bombings. I think there's partly a media phenomenon now. You know, when Charlie Kirk was assassinated, millions of Americans instantly watched on their phones. And I just think this sort of political violence because of the media environment feels more present than it ever has done before. Again, if you look at the numbers, 80 % of Americans say political violence is always unacceptable.

8:00That means there are some who think that political violence could be justified in some circumstances. But hardly anybody thinks that it's okay to try and assassinate the president in this way. So I think it's one of these things that it's possible to take a feeling that feels true and exaggerate it. So I want to be careful not to do that.

8:18Rosie Blau:You've already said that Trump is brilliant at turning any adversity into a boost for him. We know that his popularity is low at the moment, not least because of the conflict in Iran. He's got the midterms coming up. What will this event do to his popularity? I don't expect it to change his approval ratings much. I think there might be a short-term boost in his popularity as shy Republicans, who are not big fans of his current policies, become a bit more willing to answer pollsters' questions. There's a nerdy term for this, which is partisan non-response bias. So you might see a little uptick there.

8:59But what really underpins presidential approval It's things like people's perceptions of the state of the economy. The Iran war is not popular. So I'd be pretty surprised if this had a lasting effect. But that's not to say that it doesn't matter. I think there is a real thing that America has to wrestle with here. You know, keeping the president completely safe from any risk would mean having him never leave the White House or interact with people. That would obviously lead to him being a remote, out-of-touch figure, whoever the president is. and the more this kind of thing happens, the likelier that system of government becomes, which would be very bad for America.

9:37And just one parting thought, this is perhaps another reminder to everyone to dial down the rhetoric about American democracy being in existential peril. We at The Economist tend to be pretty careful with how we use our words and I think that's a good thing.

9:52Rosie Blau:John, thank you very much for talking to me. Thanks, Rosie.

10:15We'll be right back.

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11:56The head of Germany's armed forces would not normally expect to be recognized in public. But when Karsten Breuer was on a plane to Dusseldorf recently, a man sitting in front of him on the plane decided to approach him at the end of the flight. Tom Nuttall is The Economist's Berlin bureau chief. It's a scene you'd normally expect would happen only in America. But it's a sign of the newfound respect that the Bundeswehr, Germany's armed forces, is beginning to enjoy amongst the German public. He stood up, he waited for me, and then he said, well, I would say, thank you for your service, and please tell us all your soldiers.

12:32It's also not surprising that General Breuer was recognized. Unlike most of his predecessors in the job, he is a regular on television, Germans recognize his face. And that's because as Germany embarks on a once-in-a-generation rearmament, the general has made it a priority to communicate to the German public the need to restore the armed forces to a public that may once have been very uncertain about its own military. So, Tom, you say once in a generation rearmament. What do you mean by that? Talk me through it. Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, the Germans have been rethinking their approach to their military.

13:14You may remember that just days after that invasion, Olaf Scholz, who was then the chancellor, declared a so-called Zeitungwende or a turning point. And one of the features of this was a big investment in the Bundeswehr, which had been run down for years up until that point. And the current government, which took office almost a year ago, has accelerated this investment. They have relaxed their fiscal rules. They're pouring vast sums into the German armed forces. They're rethinking the way that they do procurement. And so to find out more about this, our defense editor, Shashank Joshi, and I interviewed Mr.

13:51Breuer in the Bendler Block, the head of the defense ministry in Berlin the other day. One thing is very, very clear. We are not doing this for ourselves. We are doing this for the sake of Europe. We are doing it for the sake of stability and freedom and peace in Europe. And we are doing it together with our allies. So why is it that you wanted to speak with him now? So we were invited in by General Breuer to talk to him about the publication of a new military strategy. This is actually the first such document in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. And the document, or at least the public bits of it that we were allowed to see, basically lays out the plans for the development of the Bundeswehr for the years ahead.

14:31So it looks at all of the features of the modern battlefield, including some of the lessons that have been taken from Ukraine, the use of drones, but also the capabilities that the Bundeswehr is going to need in the future to guide the development of a force into which vast sums of money are being poured. So this enormous rearmament sounds expensive. Last year, just before the new government took office, the Bundestag, the German parliament, agreed to exempt defence spending from the debt break. This is a very strict rule that limits government spending. So this essentially means that, at least in legal terms, defence spending can be unlimited.

15:09And they're really going for it. We've already got a defence budget of over 100 billion euros this year. By the end of the decade, 2029, that could rise to over 160 billion euros. That is also the year in which Germany has pledged to reach the new NATO defence spending target of 3.5 % of GDP. Now, that's six years earlier than the Allies are supposed to meet the target in 2035. So that is a very clear signal that Germany has sent to its allies of seriousness of intent that it is going to turn the Bundeswehr, this long neglected military force, into one of the most formidable armies in Europe. But what is the actual plan here?

15:47How will the money be spent? You said lessons have been taken from Ukraine. This is building a modern, maybe drone-led force. Yeah, so there's a lot of discussion about this and quite a lot of concerns, frankly, that in some respects Germany might be pouring money into fighting the last war. In essence, spending too much on legacy crewed systems, your tanks, your fighter jets, and not enough on R &D in general, but specifically some of the weaponry and technology that has proven its worth in Ukraine. Drones, most obviously, but AI-enabled systems, robotics, also on satellite surveillance, that sort of thing.

16:24Now, when we asked the general about that, his point was that the Bundeswehr had been so run into the ground in the years before Russia's invasion of Ukraine that they just had to spend a fortune on replenishing old systems before they could think about building some of this innovative weaponry on top. You can call it legacy systems. I would call them Gertfels. I think he was also alert to the fact that there are important lessons to take from Ukraine. He said it's not a blueprint for the next war, but it does have something to teach us. And the thing he wanted to highlight wasn't so much the use of this or that system, But the fact in Ukraine, they're working under these very intense wartime conditions, and you have these very, very rapid innovation cycles where fresh sorts of weapons are being developed every two weeks.

17:10He said that's the sort of attitude that he wants to import to Germany that can be very slow and sluggish with these sorts of things. And so to your mind, it is as simple as spending a sufficient amount of money to make Germany's armed forces as ready as apparently they want to be. I would say that there's two particular challenges that lie ahead. One, and this is actually not just an issue for defence, but across the German government system, is that just getting things done, getting them through the machine, getting procurement to work smoothly and efficiently and not having to deal with yards and yards of red tape really is a difficult task.

17:44We had procurement processes which were designed to procure nothing. Because in the former times we had enough time, but we didn't have money. The second is boosting the number of soldiers. So to meet its NATO obligations, by 2035, Germany needs to have 460 ,000 soldiers, 260 ,000 active and 200 ,000 strong reserve. Right now, they've got just over 180 ,000 active soldiers. So that means they've got to find 80 ,000 as well as replacements for everybody who's going to retire. And that's very, very difficult. Last year, the Parliament passed a law that means that any boy who turns 18 this year will have to fill out a questionnaire that basically assesses their willingness and their readiness to enlist.

18:35And the stated hope is that enough of them will do that to be able to get those numbers up to where they need to be. But talk to anybody inside the system and no one thinks that this is going to be sufficient. And that means that most people think at some point Germany is going to have to have a very public, difficult conversation about reintroducing conscription. And how much of any of this do you think boils down to a nervousness that Donald Trump will follow through on threats to withdraw from NATO and that the world, Germany, needs to be ready for that? Yeah, this is kind of the ghost at the feast.

19:09So the document identifies Russia as the main adversary for Europe. But when you read it, you can feel America hovering over the whole thing. There are obviously great fears here, particularly after the Greenland and the Iran episodes, that America's security guarantee just cannot be relied on anymore. And I think that's one reason why the Germans understand that there really is this clamor for leadership, including military leadership, among its allies for the Bundeswehr to become one of the strongest forces in Europe. I would not be a military planner or military leader if I'm not thinking in different scenarios and also in a worst case scenario.

19:47Tom, thanks very much for joining us. Thanks, Jason.

20:02Carla Subirana:I recently heard about a life hack. If you're struggling with dating in the West, you can just live and go somewhere where your money goes further and your dating odds and your status improve. And this is the message that the passport grows. pitch, who are Western men traveling abroad, often in search of what many of them refer to as good women. And Carlos Ubudana, one of our news editors, I know you took a trip to Da Nang in Vietnam for the Weekend Intelligence to meet some of these passport bros. What impression did you get as to what exactly they're after? It's important to note that this is a very broad movement.

20:43Carla Subirana:There's a very big spectrum of men going out there. On one end of the spectrum, there are men who are looking for genuine long-term relationships. And on the other end of the spectrum, there are men who maybe want more submissive women. Some of the men we spoke to specify they wanted poorer women because it was easier to be the dominant partner in the relationship this way and to live out traditional roles that way. And as you say, Carla, it is a big spectrum. And at the darker end of that spectrum are some quite troubling things. As part of the episode, we ask for people to feed back. You've been keeping an eye on social media about the reaction, and there's been a lot of reaction.